Wow, reading all these horror stories makes me so happy to have seen how organized the 46th LD caucus was.

Delegates names were attached to numbers and they gave speeches in order with clearly marked ballots with names and numbers.

The agenda and rules were mailed to delegates two weeks before the caucus. There was no arguing about things like the Pledge, it was just done, because it was on the agenda.

46th LD Caucus RULES! HOOAH!

can't speak to the 43d but the 46th wasted a whole day for a meaningless exercise in bylaws, agendas, rulings, and other parliamentary things that totally turn off most people from getting involved in local politics. They could have registered the Obama and Clinton votes by 10 am, done everything else via the internet and let 1200 people have their day back. Perhaps to go home and make phone calls for Obama in PA.

In fact, what is the purpose of slightly adjusting Obama or Clinton's delegate allocations based on whether everyone elected on 2/9 shows up on 4/5?
This is just not rational.

People want politics to be about the war, the economy, change, the schools, transit, not meetings and rulings by the chair and watching some idiot move to amend the minimum wage platfrom because her employees waste money on coach handbags, groans from the audience, then everyone feels good voting her down. To absolutely no effect as the platform doesn't mean anything.

Voting for 40 delegates who won't at the next meeting deliberate anything more than "I'm still for Obama!" is silly, too.

It's just a bizarre tibal ritual that the public finds weird and off putting.

Feh. Out here in hooterville it was just as silly and disorganized. Confirming the delegate counts & attendance took three hours (but the two eighty-year-old-ladies doing it (by hand, I'm sure) were just so sweet). Still. This is the 21st century, I'm sure one of those new-fangled computers with that program stuff Bill Gates makes could have done the job in about ten seconds or so.

We hadn't finished voting by 4:00 PM when we had to clear out of the hall.

And - nothing personal here, Dems, but a lot of the attendees just looked scruffy. Props to the one or two apparatchiks who actually dressed up and behaved, but the rest of you were a bunch of soda-swilling slobs.

Makes me want to sneak into a republican party function, just to see how the other side does things...

Oh, and an especially big, fat BOO to the dirty, stinky hippy with the "Impeach Now" and "No Iran War" signs. You fucked up big time, stinky hippy dude.

The school gym we were in had some gorgeous hand-airbrushed murals on the walls, and the caucus volunteers were careful NOT to stick any of the Clinton and Obama signs on the painted murals. Plus they used blue painters tape which is low-tack.

Stinky Hippy Dude used fuckin' duct tape to stick his stinky hippy signs smack in the middle of the murals.

As I was leaving, some poor caucus volunteer was trying to buff out the splotch of ruined paint and tape goo that stinky hippy's signs left behind.

Bet that school thinks twice about allowing us to use their gym again. Way to ruin it, stinky hippy guy. I know you believe in your cause, and a lot of the rest of us pretty much agree, but dumb stunts like that end up pissing people off and diluting the message.

@4 -- I cannot thank you enough. Only when all good people insist on hippy cleanliness will this situation take a change for the better.

Global warming doesn't have a patch on the long-term environmental impact of the patchouli cloud that hovers over parts of Seattle, and all that is the fault of sign-wielding stinky hippies.

Shut up, hippy! You stink!

Jube, do you think destroying school murals is going to end global warming, then?

The delegate parade good in good concept, but failed in that by the time the parade started, most people had left and the majority that reminded were the ones in the parade. Basically, they were parading for each other.

@6 -- I don't have a clue what you're saying. I think school murals are typically egregious displays of crap artistic merit and ham-handed symbolism, but I have yet to determine a link between them and global warming.

@7 -- Your final sentence could basically define the majority of political threads on Slog.

The delegate parade should include a swimsuit competition. It wouldn't do anything to improve democratic legitimacy, but it would add a personal fitness incentive for some of us poligeeks who spend too much time munching bar snacks and running our keyboards.

Come on, Jube. I know you can read. The stinky hippie you were applauding for his great work on global warming defaced a school mural, unlike every other candidate there (all of whom are probably better advocates for the environment, too). You might not like this mural, but that doesn't mean it's cool to slap duct tape on it like a flaming asshole.

@10 -- And I guess now I know you CAN'T read. Where in any of my posts have I EVER applauded ANYTHING a stinky hippy has done?

leafcutter ants are AWESOME.

(hopefully the delegates didn't have to chew up their signs, though.)

I was reading irony into @5. My apologies if I was mistaken.

@13 -- When it comes to stinky hippies, I curry no irony. That asshole screwed up the mural, and he's a stinky hippy. He must die.

I accept your apology, Fnarf. God bless you.

Unless this guy is lying totally it seems we sure didn't get the real news from the 43d caucus:
from horses ass today:
In my LD (43rd) caucus yesterday, Clinton['s] . . .designated speaker ...was booed several times by the Obama crowd as she talked positively about Clinton.

Obama’s speaker? Well, no one out of the 600 or so on the Obama side was ready or volunteering. No one wanted to give a speech for Obama. So the vice-chair of the 43rd ...started speaking off the cuff. For 3.5 minutes of his speech, it was about “hope and change” - very general b.s. ...And then, for the last minute and a half, the tone changed, and he launched into a scathing attack of Hillary Clinton as “the most polarizing figure in the U.S. today.” And he launched into a massive diatribe against her.

At that point, I lead many other delegates in the Clinton camp to stand and turn our backs for the last 1.5 minutes to show our disgust with a democrat who has voiced no specific reason that he supports his candidate besides generalities (and that his candidate gives him warm fuzzies - that’s a reason to vote for the guy?). And we finished his speech by standing and keeping our backs turned to him for the remainder of the speech.

We got 7 of those 8 defectors in the gymnasium THAT day because of the vitriol that the Obama supporters had spewed. The 7 had said that they realized, being in the stands, that they were on the wrong side. They didn’t want to be associated with a candidate who’s supporters did those sorts of things. They were offended by the 43rd district’s vice-chair’s speech and the booing that their previous fellow supporters had done during the Hillary speech.

@15, whoever wrote that wasn't at the 43rd. At the 43rd, Ed Murray was Obama's surrogate and Sam the garden loving hobbit spoke for Clinton.

@15,

Thanks for the link and for any documentation to prove that version of events. Oh wait.

The comment quoted in #15 is actually from a lying SOB who lives in the 34th (says it was "dyslexia" that made him say 43rd).

In fact, Obama gained 1 delegate (in WA-08) between their preliminary and final counts. The overall 38-13 result was two better for Obama than what would have been expected from the precinct results on February 9.

See the 34th District LD Caucus Report for further details.

P.S. to Anthony Hecht -- actually, there were 400 candidates for Obama delegate to the CD in the 43rd, not 200. I know because I created the ballots.

Can someone find the person who decided to get the hobbit to be Clinton's surrogate in the 43rd and somewhere else? It seemed so weird, particularly since he didn't seem that, um, articulate or knowledgable. Hollywood stars have the burden of having to be twice as articulate/knowledgable as anybody else, because they are presumed stupid. And when they are designated surrogates they have maybe an actual burden to be so. Particularly if flown in from elsewhere at the risk of insulting locals who might think themsleves qualified.

So whose idea was this, and what was the rationale?

leafcutters LOL!!!
where i work i see those every day.

I keep looking at this picture expecting to see a mini-delegate riding on one of the signs, waving its antenna frantically and defending valiantly as some enemy comes near...

@15 - that never happened.

As Caucus Secretary, I KNOW it never happened.

Obama picked up delegates from Clinton in the 43rd and 46th Districts - which you can see on the websites for both districts. Similar occurrences statewide, overall.

Great job with the ballots, N in Seattle - I was surprised how fast those got done, considering how many people were on them.

The 46th LD caucus was a life-draining suck-fest from start to finish. I wasn't seated and got to take off at 11:30, but my friend who stayed gave me the full account of the rest of the day's meaningless parliamentarianism.

CAUCUSES ARE FUCKED. GO PRIMARIES.

No real problems at the 32nd District Caucus. Each member was assigned a number beforehand, and each of the 170+ people running for the 29 spots available said their number at the beginning and end of their 30 second speech. We'd all been given a pen or pencil inside our delegate envelopes. So most of us just wrote down numbers we liked, and maybe a few keywords next to each number. It was easy and relatively painless (just LONG!!). The day started at 9:30am and delegate ballots were turned in at 3:30pm.